ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the developments in the credit market of the second half of the sixteenth century. It describes how merchant handbooks published in this period provide methods to protect and to trade in that most volatile of assets, business credit. It goes on to argue that city comedies, exemplified here by Ben Jonson's, The Alchemist of 1610, profit from the riskiness involved in the fantasy of value which is credit. In both trade and art, the risk which a merchant takes with his credit produces his profit. Far from being unearned, such interest is the product of hard work, careful artistry and a shrewd understanding of people. Credit is no longer associated with credit-worthiness, or damned as usurious dealing in unreal estate. Critics of the literary and mercantile markets tend to overlook the excitement that this fantasy product arouses, in their discussions of the moral implications of economic individualism.
